Snoring and mild sleep apnea are generally thought to be the result of a reduced or partial constriction of the airway during sleep. This may be attributed to soft tissue sinking and applying pressure on the airway during sleep including the mandible dropping and moving backwards. Mandibular advancement devices (MADs) are designed to move the mandible forward to relieve the force applied from soft tissue during sleep and assisting in opening the airway. Depending on the patient, the advancement of the mandible may vary based on the response of the patient. Optimizing the adjustment is referred to as titration.
The present applicant has disclosed several embodiments of MADs in previous publications, which include: U.S. application Ser. Nos. 14/809,208, 15/416,666, 15/416,715, and International Application No. PCT/US2017/015530, the disclosure of all of which is incorporated by reference herein, including the drawings. In some applications, it is necessary to have a finer adjustment of mandibular advancement that is possible using the MADs disclosed in the above-incorporated publications. Accordingly, a need exists in the art to modify the design of the above-referenced MADs to allow for fine adjustments.